86
5 The Mind-Made Firmament
the beings themselves have the power to make some changes in the physical
world. However, there is very much more that can be said about the external
world, and Chapter 7 is devoted to that topic.
Every living being harbors an internal model of its world. The function of the
model isn’t to produce a faithful replica of the physical environment: Rather,
it is meant to model the domain of interactions between an organism and
its external milieu. It must represent those features of the environment that
impact the organism, in conjunction with the organism’s patterns of action
and how they alter the environment. The content of the model is presented
to awareness in sensory categories experienced as shape, patterns of motion,
structure.
Definite objects and features exist only in a world that has been segmented
according to a fixed scheme. A world outside the purview of any observer can
be subdivided into parts in a great many alternative ways. Thus, the world
outside the range of observation is pluripotent. Using a word dear to physicists,
such a world is a superposition of many possible schemes of organization. Thus,
analyzing the physical world as we have done here brings us inevitably to the
reality discovered by quantum theory, which was a principal motivator of this
book.
In the vocabulary of quantum physics, when observed, the manifold possibilities “collapse” into the notional world of the observer. Whereas in the most
popular account of quantum theory the multiple possibilities correspond to
different universes, in the present interpretation they correspond merely to
different observers. This has the effect of naturalizing quantum theory and
removing the mysterious aspects that many books describe as “quantum weirdness”.
The universe known by an observer consists of definite, determinate things.
In contrast, the universe outside the purview of any observer is indefinite and
virtual. As the physicist Werner Heisenberg said, before observation objects
are virtual, but once observed they become actual. The act of observation does
not change anything physically in the universe. It affects only the immaterial
realm of knowledge in observers. However, in the ontology presented here,
knowledge in living observers is a fundamental element of reality, certainly not
a “figment”.
A major theme of this book is that “reality” is not confined to matter and
its physical properties. There is a whole firmament of appearances, sensations,
perceptions, insights and wide-ranging Gestalt vision. These things exist in the
minds of sentient creatures, and are often won by hard and persistent effort.
It is true that they exist only in animal minds, but they are nonetheless real
and indispensable aspects of the universe. What is shown above is that the very
5 The Mind-Made Firmament
the beings themselves have the power to make some changes in the physical
world. However, there is very much more that can be said about the external
world, and Chapter 7 is devoted to that topic.
Every living being harbors an internal model of its world. The function of the
model isn’t to produce a faithful replica of the physical environment: Rather,
it is meant to model the domain of interactions between an organism and
its external milieu. It must represent those features of the environment that
impact the organism, in conjunction with the organism’s patterns of action
and how they alter the environment. The content of the model is presented
to awareness in sensory categories experienced as shape, patterns of motion,
structure.
Definite objects and features exist only in a world that has been segmented
according to a fixed scheme. A world outside the purview of any observer can
be subdivided into parts in a great many alternative ways. Thus, the world
outside the range of observation is pluripotent. Using a word dear to physicists,
such a world is a superposition of many possible schemes of organization. Thus,
analyzing the physical world as we have done here brings us inevitably to the
reality discovered by quantum theory, which was a principal motivator of this
book.
In the vocabulary of quantum physics, when observed, the manifold possibilities “collapse” into the notional world of the observer. Whereas in the most
popular account of quantum theory the multiple possibilities correspond to
different universes, in the present interpretation they correspond merely to
different observers. This has the effect of naturalizing quantum theory and
removing the mysterious aspects that many books describe as “quantum weirdness”.
The universe known by an observer consists of definite, determinate things.
In contrast, the universe outside the purview of any observer is indefinite and
virtual. As the physicist Werner Heisenberg said, before observation objects
are virtual, but once observed they become actual. The act of observation does
not change anything physically in the universe. It affects only the immaterial
realm of knowledge in observers. However, in the ontology presented here,
knowledge in living observers is a fundamental element of reality, certainly not
a “figment”.
A major theme of this book is that “reality” is not confined to matter and
its physical properties. There is a whole firmament of appearances, sensations,
perceptions, insights and wide-ranging Gestalt vision. These things exist in the
minds of sentient creatures, and are often won by hard and persistent effort.
It is true that they exist only in animal minds, but they are nonetheless real
and indispensable aspects of the universe. What is shown above is that the very